Have you ever wish that you are a scientist working hard at the cutting edge of research? Do you want to help humanity progress in the forefront of science?

Now you can! And all you need is a working computer/ mobile device and BOINC!

Introduction To BOINC

BOINC stands for Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. BOINC is an open-source system which supports volunteer and grid computing. It is the platform which enables researchers in large diverse disciplines (of mathematics, linguistics, medicine, molecular biology, climatology, environmental science, and astrophysics) to tap into the enormous processing resources of multiple personal computers and handheld mobile devices around the world.

BOINC enables you to donate the unused computing power of the CPU and GPU in your computer/mobile devices to do scientific computer. BOINC is smart enough to suspend itself (stop computing) when it detects that you are using the computer/mobile devices.

Mini Physics supports/endorses the World Community Grid. World Community Grid is a philanthropic initiative of IBM Corporate Citizenship, the corporate social responsibility and philanthropy division of IBM.

World Community Grid has supported 27 research projects to date, including searches for more effective treatments for cancer, HIV/AIDS and neglected tropical diseases. Other projects are looking for low-cost water filtration systems and new materials for capturing solar energy efficiently.

Credit System In BOINC

The various distributed-computing projects on the BOINC platform offers an “incentive” for people to donate the computing power of their computers/mobile devices. The projects rewards volunteers with “credits” for completed computational work.

Please note that:

The credits are purely for show. It does not have economical value. E.g. You are unable to exchange 1 credit for cold hard cash in real life.

Each projects have their own ratio of credit/CPU-second. (I.e. You will receive different amount of credit for each hour of computational time across different projects)

The screenshot above shows the projects that are currently running on my Windows computer. The work done refers to the total amount of credit that is granted to my account. The average work done refers to the recent average credit (RAC), which is an estimate of the average amount of credit that is granted to my account every day.